THE Yankees have a $200 million payroll, not $200 million in talent. Players such as Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi and Steve Karsay, for example, would have a hard time getting paid if they were on the free-agent market now. That trio will cost the Yankees $38 million on the luxury tax payroll in 2005.

One American League team attempted to tackle the difference between what players are paid and what they deserve. Executives from this team came to a consensus on what each player should earn, designing this exercise as a way to identify underpaid assets on other rosters.

But their results were fascinating. The Cardinals, at $182 million, ended up with the largest payroll value, a reflection of having so many superb players and almost no useless ones. The Yankees, at $162 million, had the second largest payroll value, but that also gave them the sixth-worst differential (minus-$21 million) to their actual payroll of $183 million. The Mets had the fourth-worst differential, getting $55 million worth of talent for $100.7 million in actual payout.

An executive who participated in this exercise, who asked his team not be revealed, conceded the fallibilities. Salaries were based exclusively on last year’s performance and not on any kind of projections, and they used modern metrics such as Win Shares as a guide and very little actual scouting of ability. Still, what emerged is just how few established players earn their actual paychecks.

This is mainly because by the time players reach free agency, they already have had their best seasons in their prime years. Clubs end up paying for what a player has done with the hope he will extend that performance further or only diminish incrementally. Let’s look at the New York teams by splitting players who began last year with the clubs and earned at least a million dollars, and assign them to a category of underpaid, justly paid, overpaid, grossly overpaid (in my opinion worth less than half of his actual contract). Remember these reflect my personal biases:

So 14 of the Yankees’ 22 million-dollar players were overpaid in some fashion and the Yanks could only claim five bargains. A-Rod falls into the right pay because as a Yankee he is earning $16 million annually with the Rangers paying the rest. Jeter, at $19 million, is overpaid even if you take into account his value in marketing and intangibles as a captain.